You don't have to follow it too closely to realise the National League can generally be depended on to produce at least one public relations disaster each season. Some involve costly, and sometimes absurd, legal battles, others cheaper but just as daft slanging matches usually conducted as publicly as possible, writes Emmet Malone.
The matters in dispute can be of genuine significance or almost entirely inconsequential, it seems to matter little. What has been demonstrated time and again in recent years is that if it is even vaguely related to football, and it can be argued about, then there are at least two officials from the league's 22 clubs who can manage to assume diametrically opposed positions. They will then fight it out as if their lives depended on the outcome.
The new season is still young and we have yet to see what's in store for us but to judge by the ongoing saga of Roy Dooney's position within Merrion Square you might suspect that club officials are having doubts about their ability to produce even one decent fresh controversy over the coming months. Instead, they are keen to fall back on a fiasco from last year.
Dooney's role in the Paul Marney case, and then the case of Charles Mbabazi, has been the subject of countless media reports, one major internal investigation, and numerous meetings since it was first discovered St Patrick's Athletic had failed to properly register all of their players for last season.
Recently there has been growing expectation Dooney would depart with a fun-sized cheque and that both he and the league would then get on with things. However, at last week's board of control meeting there was such strong opposition voiced to the idea of completing the pay-off there is now renewed doubt on the future of the league's first, and perhaps last, "commissioner".
The issue now looks like being the main topic on the agenda at this afternoon's management committee meeting when it is hoped some sort of resolution to the problem can finally be achieved.
GOING through with the severance deal, reputed to be worth about €75,000, is again likely to be one of the options on the table for club representatives to consider, with the FAI apparently now willing to stump up half of this amount. The other options are simply to take their chances with sacking Dooney and fighting the inevitable claim for damages or leaving him in place.
The strong criticisms contained in the Legal Affairs Committee report into Dooney's handling of last season's difficulties are believed by some to provide a sound basis for a dismissal, a course of action that might save the league a significant sum of money.
Dooney, though, continues to contest several of the committee's key findings and at least one club has had legal advice to the effect that its contents would give the departing official the opportunity to challenge his dismissal on one or more grounds.
That in itself means little, of course, but it would suggest if tonight's meeting opts to dispense with Dooney's services without compensating him for the two years believed to remain on his contract then the clubs may in any case end up paying him a substantial figure as well as the inevitable legal bills that would come with fighting the case.
A number of clubs still appear to believe Dooney could be allowed to continue in place but even he admits the extent to which he has lost the backing of the some of the big Dublin outfits would probably make his position unworkable.
Allowing him to carry on would certainly have the advantage of avoiding the need for the lump sum payment although if Dooney has effectively been left a lame duck by events of the past 10 months then paying him something would represent a poor alternative.
It would be nice to think that in the event the severance money was not paid it could instead be given to Darren Bernstein, the latest marketing manager for the league, to do the job without any budget at all. To believe that might actually happen, though, is almost certain to take refuge in cloud cuckoo land. Bernstein, who is spoken highly of by club officials, will presumably be expected to continue settling for advising clubs on the basics of cost-free press and public relations - advice that many will simply ignore.
So, none of the three options facing representatives at today's meeting is, on the face of it, especially attractive from their point of view and none can be expected to receive universal support. The need to make a decision on how best to draw a line under last season's problems and move forward, however, is growing more pressing as the league is undergoing considerable change at the moment and the last thing it needs is to be paralysed by continued uncertainty over the position of it key administrator.
After all, we can only be a matter of weeks away from this season's first fresh battle over cross border transfers and European law, players' signatures and Irish contract law or, er, kick-off times.
